


The A.G.R.A. Treasure

by ShirleyCarlton



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, His Last Vow, John inseparable by his side, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Sherlock back in hospital, and actual hugs, but some interesting dreams, only very slight fluff sorry, this might actually have happened, with memory sticks as metaphors for... well... something of a generally similar shape :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShirleyCarlton/pseuds/ShirleyCarlton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock tricked Mary into exposing her background to John and was taken back to hospital, he wants to make sure he will be able protect John from whatever might be coming in the future. (Set during His Last Vow.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Announced Hugs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [khorazir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/khorazir/gifts).



> This is my [Johnlockchallenges Valentine Exchange](http://johnlockchallenges.tumblr.com/post/73920168494/johnlock-valentines-day-exchange-were-back-and) gift for Khorazir, who asked for a missing scene from series three. To be honest, I would otherwise probably never have written a missing scene, because I hate to be proven wrong ;) but I reckoned that this could *actually* be what happened. So well, there you go, hope you like it! :)  
> (By far my longest fic up till now! And finally one written from Sherlock’s perspective!)
> 
> Thanks again to my betas [Mydogwatson](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/) and [Shirelockhomes](http://shirelockhomes.tumblr.com). Couldn’t do this without you.
> 
> [2014-03-16] Now there's a lovely manip by [GlassDildo](http://glassdildo.tumblr.com/) that she coincidentally made independently and permitted me to use as an illustration for my fic! See the bottom of the first chapter.

“We were told there was a shooting.”

As two paramedics came rushing into 221B at just the time he had predicted, Sherlock tucked his relief deep away where no one would notice.  
The bewildered-looking men of course saw nothing but three people sitting quietly in their armchairs, one of them with the nerve to casually ask if they had brought any morphine.  
Sherlock used his very last reserve of energy to explain things – as efficiently as he could – about his medical state to the paramedics and about Mary to John. He had to explain, make sure that everybody understood what they needed to understand.  
His voice was wavering but insistent, until he collapsed out of John’s supporting grip onto the ambulance stretcher.

They would take care of him now. Everything was going to be okay. He didn’t need to do anything anymore.  
Through half-closed eyes, Sherlock perceived the activity around him: medical equipment being taken from boxes, an oxygen mask being pushed onto his face.  
Was this all really necessary? He just needed _morphine_.

Meanwhile, John was just standing there, breathing hard, as it apparently started to dawn on him what exactly had happened. Sherlock had literally escaped from the hospital to have Mary come clean with John about her past and to subsequently persuade him that he could nevertheless trust her. Sherlock had run across London without anybody realising that he was bleeding internally.  
Of course he was. John’s wife had shot him only the week before.

But Sherlock had forgiven her. She was much too much like himself for him to be able to hate her. She was smart and efficient, funny even. And different, which was good. A psychopath, no less.  
He liked her.

John, however, seemed far from forgiving Mary.  
As he stood there, his eyes alternately reflected bafflement, rage and defeat. But there was something more: guilt.

Sherlock didn’t want John to feel guilty. Sherlock had simply done for him what had been necessary. And he felt rather content at having accomplished his mission.

It had gone quite well.

John glared at his – _he now knew_ – _secret agent_ wife across the room, while the paramedics strapped Sherlock tight to take him downstairs into the ambulance.  
John followed the men to the door without taking his eyes off Mary, then deliberately turned his back and focused on Sherlock, with a determination to make sure his friend pulled through this.

The two nurses were crisply exchanging observations and orders as they descended the stairs, while Sherlock marvelled at the unique view that the strange angle from which he was now seeing the walls and the banisters offered. They were spinning more than they should, though. But that was alright.  
The paramedics hurried Sherlock down the hallway and out of the building, where sunlight blinded his vision for a few seconds before he was inside the ambulance.  
He could feel a strange fluttering inside his chest.

_You may need to restart my heart._

His heart. On some metaphorical level, he had somehow always thought of John as his heart, funnily enough.

A numbing pain was coursing through his torso, clouding his mind.  
Yes, John was Sherlock’s heart; he was sure of it. John needed to be restarted.

_“John can’t ever know. It would break him.”_

It seemed to have indeed, to some extent, but not telling him was no option. _No option..._

_My heart – John – is broken._

It looked like perhaps everybody’s heart was broken at the moment.

The doors of the ambulance had closed and they were heading down Baker Street.  
Someone was touching his arm.  
“I’m right here with you, Sherlock, right here.”

John.

“You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay. Don’t you dare leave me again.”

Sherlock wanted to do everything for John.  
He _had_ tried to do everything he could for John, everything. More than was perhaps even humanly possible.  
_Well, if you knew the exact variables, a lot of things were possible._  
There had been a – calculated – risk and he’d gladly taken it.  
He just wanted John to be happy. John deserved to be happy. John was a good man. The best man. Very best there was. Best man... Or was that somebody else? He couldn’t remember, didn’t even care to try remembering. It was all fine, somebody once said, all fine.

* * * * *

When he woke up, Sherlock drowsily recalled where he was even before he opened his eyes. He’d woken up in the same place the previous morning, after all, and several mornings before that. Mary had shot him in the chest; he was here to recover. But there was the vague notion that something exciting had happened in between. Oh yes, the adventure at Leinster Gardens, with the nice special effects he’d arranged, then the Watsons’ little domestic at Baker Street, followed by his own rather dramatic exit. He remembered clearly now.  
He was obviously still alive, then. He smiled.  
God, the pain in his chest, though.

_Did somebody tamper with the morphine again?_

He ventured to open his eyes so he could check, and with a start saw somebody sitting right next to his bed. It took a moment for his eyes to focus. Then, with an unexpected little jolt of joy, he realised it was John. He was reading a newspaper, apparently scrutinising something it said.

“Anything interesting?” Sherlock managed to ask, his words slurring slightly.

John jerked up his head, his eyes wide. “Sherlock!”  
His face fell into a genuine but weary smile.

Sherlock only now noticed how awful John looked: his short hair standing at odd angles, bags under his eyes, his neck and shoulders stiff.  
“What time is it?” Then he noticed the clock. Seven. “Is that... morning or evening?” He frowned, feeling dazed.

John suppressed a smile. “Morning.”

John had probably been sitting in that chair the entire night. He bent forward to haul it a bit closer to the bed.  
Somehow John didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, restlessly switching their position from his knees, to the back of his neck, to his arm rests. Back to his knees – his arms straight and tense.  
“Sherlock...” John’s voice sounded squeaky. “I just want to hug you.” He shook his head and swallowed.

Sherlock was puzzled, but intrigued. They had only hugged once, at the wedding. It had felt strange, but oddly comfortable, he recollected.  
He could tell John was emotional. But why was that?

“I swear, as soon as you get better, I am going to hug you,” John promised, his voice thick. “Not once, but maybe once _every five minutes_ for the rest of my life, okay?” He blinked a couple of times, then swallowed again, smiling. “What you did… what you did was… I don’t even know what it was. Extraordinary, that’s what it was, for sure.” John clasped a hand briefly over his mouth, looking away, then smiled apprehensively again.

Sherlock felt something flutter inside him once more, but he was quite sure that this time it wasn’t any organ malfunction. His eyes suddenly felt funny, too.

“You risked your life to let me see the truth,” John continued, his jaw tense. “I want to thank you for that. And I want to say _sorry_ … for having been so blind.” His voice broke, becoming strangely high-pitched. “If I’d never fallen in love with her…” 

Sherlock wasn’t sure how to respond. His brain wasn’t working properly. Was that the morphine?  
He instinctively reached his hand over to John, who then smiled, breathing erratically and leaning his elbows on the bed as he took Sherlock’s limp hand in both his own.

Sherlock wanted to say something, but why did his lips not move? His vision was blurry now, but he could nevertheless see everything quite clearly.  
So he just smiled at John, his lips pressed tight.

“Attracted to dangerous situations and people, you said,” John huffed. “Well, I might as well have settled for you, then.” He smirked shyly. “I thought I needed some normality in my life. Turns out I was wrong. I apparently need psychopaths around me to stay sane.”

A sound escaped Sherlock’s lips that made John chuckle.

And John just continued to sit there, holding Sherlock’s hand.  
Sherlock was glad he did, and then soon drifted away again.

* * * * *

Sherlock could hear birds chirping. They were kind of loud. Sounded a bit exotic, too. There was a picnic basket on the floor. He had bare legs. There was another pair of bare legs. They were John’s. John was sitting next to him on the grass, smiling at him. Suddenly, they were both floating in the air, embracing. That must have been the hug John was talking about. He could feel John’s skin against his own, chest against chest. Warm skin. They weren’t wearing any clothes at all, which was odd. But nice. John was holding him tight and he hugged John back. He could feel John’s nose pressing against his neck, John’s lips on his collarbone. That felt good... So good. Sherlock wanted more, wanted to be even closer. Wanted to be _inside_ John, crawl into him and stay there forever. He pressed his hips against him, pressed again and again and held tight, feeling John’s firm body against his, floating in the air together, higher and higher above the trees...

*

[](http://glassdildo.tumblr.com/post/79750810003/a-companion-piece-to-the-bedside-vigil-one-i-did)

This lovely manip was made by [GlassDildo](http://glassdildo.tumblr.com/). To reblog with link to fic, click [here](http://shirleycarlton.tumblr.com/post/122011726401/johnlockismyreligion-glassdildo-a-companion).  
(Image used with the artist's permission.)  
[Click here to see more of GlassDildo's beautiful Sherlock manips (sometimes NSFW!)](http://glassdildo.tumblr.com/search/mycreations-sherlock)

[Click here](http://prettyrealisticjohnlockfanart.tumblr.com/post/79519409592/johnstached-for-my-tiger-that-wanted-johns) for a gifset of Sherlock "collapsing out of John’s supporting grip onto the ambulance stretcher" and John "just standing there, breathing hard, as it apparently started to dawn on him what exactly had happened". And [here](http://johnstached.tumblr.com/tagged/in%20which%20series) for more brilliant and funny johnlock gifsets by Johnstached. :)


	2. The Key to Everything

A trolley rattled on a hard, smooth floor. Footsteps, high heels, a woman’s. Chattering in the distance. Purplish-blue flowers standing on a windowsill, strangely out of focus. Sherlock vaguely recalled Mycroft holding those in his hand at some point before, smiling.

“Well, hello.”

John’s voice.

Sherlock turned his head in his direction and managed a faint smile.  
Thank God for John.  
“Please, tell me something interesting,” Sherlock groaned. “Or not interesting. Anything at all. I’m dying of boredom.”

And John told him every interesting and not so interesting thing he could think of. From the pendant on the lady with the library trolley that clearly indicated she’d only recently joined a secret Russian sect, to the extremely awkward spelling mistake in one of the obituaries in the newspaper.

Sherlock listened with his eyes shut, smiling. And John continued to talk until Sherlock’s smile faded into the relaxation of sleep again.

* * * * *

He'd never seen John's face from this close before. It looked so very familiar, yet so strange from this unusual perspective. It was like he was hovering in front of him, with warmth and care radiating from his eyes. He seemed to be surrounded by purple lights, like fireflies. Or maybe they were lilac. Sherlock felt like leaning forward, touching John’s lips with his. _No; I can't kiss John, can I?_ He's married to Mary... Instead, Sherlock just held John’s face in his hands, staring into his eyes, drowning in his gaze, drowning, drowning.

* * * * *

Sherlock opened his eyes. Was John there? He had been there every time he woke up in the past two days.  
Not that he knew which day it was.  
It seemed he had been here an eternity, in this wretched hospital bed. And John had always been there, sometimes reading the paper or a book, sometimes sleeping in the comfortable chair in the far corner.  
But now he was nowhere to be seen.  
Well, this was dull.

Sherlock drank some water from the glass at the bedside table. This required the use of all kinds of muscles, all of which seemed inexplicably and painfully connected to his damaged internal organs.  
When he was finally done – glass back on the table, in one piece – and John still had not returned, Sherlock was a bit offended.

It was dark. Well, as dark as it got in a hospital, anyway.  
Where could John possibly have gone?  
Sherlock decided to call a nurse.

The nurse kindly explained that his friend had gone home to get some sleep.

 _Home?_ To Mary, of course. _Yes, he could trust her._  
Some nameless thought gnawed at the edge of his mind though.  
 _They knew nothing about her._ Well, very little, anyway, other than that she’d been a hired assassin. Somebody might come for her, do them both harm. But who? He had nothing to go on.

But there was _something_ , something important, nagging at the periphery of his thoughts. Some kind of key, small and silvery.

_The USB memory key!_

She had given John the memory stick with all the information about who she used to be.  
Sherlock’s eyes widened in the semi-darkness, his mouth a small ‘o’.  
He had seen John quickly shoving it back into his pocket once when he’d opened his eyes. At that time John had apparently still not looked at its contents.

He was going to, though, wasn’t he?

_What if he wasn’t?_

Sherlock tried to decide whether that was a bad thing or not. Obviously, knowledge could be devastating, in a number of ways. Once knowledge was in your head, you could give it away to the wrong people, even without realising. And there was no way to un-know. Sure, he himself had managed to delete things in the past. But those were generally irrelevant things.  
This was different.

But _not_ knowing about Mary could also be dangerous. For dozens of different reasons.

He tried to weigh the pros and cons, but fell asleep before he reached a conclusion.

* * * * *

The kitchen table looked oddly empty. Had John been cleaning the flat again? There was just his laptop on it. It was open, but the screen was somehow blank. All white. Sherlock could hear typing, but there was no one there. He wanted to look something up, needed some information, but couldn’t remember what or where. Then he noticed the memory stick, floating in mid-air in front of him. He looked at the letters scribbled onto it: “A.G.R.A.” Mary’s initials. He wanted to know what they stood for, felt a swelling compulsion to find out exactly who she had been, how bad it all was. He desperately wanted to plug it into his laptop, and tried to reach for it, but it kept disappearing, floating away. _I must plug it in, if only to download the contents._ It would only take a minute. Sherlock tried to catch it, again and again, becoming more and more frustrated, angry even. Then he saw it morphing into a tiny treasure chest, lock glistening in the sunlight, as it was falling to the floor, then vanished between the floorboards, burying itself deep where Sherlock couldn’t reach. It was gone. Then, John and Janine suddenly walked in. Janine was smiling, but John kept staring at her, utterly baffled, jaw dropped. At the same time, there was disappointment in his face; such strong disappointment, practically horror, that it was painful to look at. Janine didn’t even seem to notice John was there, just kept smiling and casually swirling about the room. What was happening to John? He was sinking to his knees, shrinking, melting away until there was nothing left of him but a small heap of desert sand. Sherlock wanted to move, to do something, but he was frozen, trapped in the body of a marble statue.

*


	3. Practical Closeness

Someone was tugging at his bed sheets, tucking them in under the mattress. Sherlock didn’t bother opening his eyes. Must be John.  
No, he remembered, John wasn’t there anymore. A nurse then.  
Sherlock peered through his lashes. No, it was John after all, thankfully.  
He took a deep breath of relief.

“Oh. Sorry to have woken you up. The sheets had all shifted to one side,” John mumbled awkwardly, trying a smile as to convey he was not in the habit of tucking in other men’s bed sheets. “I thought you might be cold.”

A content smirk appeared on Sherlock’s face.  
Where would he be without his blogger slash private doctor slash nurse?  
“You left.” His voice still sounded groggy.

“Yeah. I’m... er... afraid I needed to sleep with my neck at a normal angle for a night,” John said apologetically.

“Of course. You hadn’t been home for several days.”

“Still haven’t.”  
John walked to the corner of the room to throw away his empty paper tea cup. “Stayed at a hotel around the corner, The Andaman. Comfortable enough.”  
He sat down in the chair next to the bed. “But I will go home tonight. I’ve had some time to cool down and let things sink in, but I have to go back to work at some point, and Mary will be there. So I can’t keep avoiding her.”  
John tapped his fingers on his armrests, pursing his lips.  
“And another reason why I can’t avoid her forever, is the fact that we’re... married.” He articulated the last word exaggeratedly, his face in a grimace.

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully. He pressed his lips together. “Have you... read the memory stick yet?”

“Nope.” There was a silence. “Haven’t decided yet whether I will.” John’s nostrils flared wide with suppressed emotion and he averted his head, looking out of the window.

“John, I think it could be dangerous not knowing her past, not knowing her enemies. I think – ” 

“ _No_ ,” John countered resolutely. “This is _my_ decision to make, and I will make it _by myself_.” He was starting to look dangerous. “Tea?”

Time to change the subject, apparently.  
“Yes, lovely, thank you,” Sherlock answered timidly, wincing as he was trying to sit up.

John left and came back with two steaming cups, which he placed on the bedside table.  
“So. You seem a lot better today,” he stated, suddenly sounding deliberately cheerful. “I’m glad.”

“It’s all relative,” Sherlock muttered.

They drank tea in silence for a while.

Just before his cup was finished, Sherlock remembered something he had been meaning to tell John.  
“I never actually had sex with Janine, you know,” he said, looking at John from the corner of his eye, his mouth flickering into a faint smile and back. “I thought I should perhaps clear that up.”  
He pressed his lips tightly together.  
“I didn’t take advantage of her in that way, at least,” he smiled crookedly. “Not that it would have been any advantage to me, anyway. You know that.”  
He then quickly averted his eyes, for his statement had turned out a bit more direct than he had intended it to be.

“I see.” An odd kind of relief flickered over John’s face.

“I’m also quite certain that deep down, she knew all along that what we had wasn’t real,” Sherlock continued. “She’s a smart woman. But I guess she was just... blinded by my stunning looks,” he said as he tried to fake an innocent face. “Clouded her judgment just a tiny bit. The wish is often father to the thought, after all.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me,” John muttered, smiling somewhat sheepishly.

“I must say, she took it rather well, actually, when she found out. Very soon saw the bright side, and also promptly made sure we were even.” A faint smile. “Anyway, she was not completely intolerable or I wouldn’t have managed to keep up appearances for a whole month. I’m not _that_ good an actor. But nowhere near as...” And then, suddenly: “I missed you.”

 _Where did *that* come from? God, this morphine._  
Not that it wasn’t true.

John smiled a sad smile, lowering his eyes, then briefly touched Sherlock’s hand. His lips started to move as if to say something, but he didn’t.

* * * * *

They spent the rest of the day reading newspapers and slagging off crap telly together, just like the good old days.

Later that afternoon, John went home, and then back to work the next day.

Sherlock tried to watch telly again, but without John there to share in his disgust about the imbecility of it all – or to completely disagree with him on this – it just made him want to jump out his hospital room window again within about ten minutes.

John came to visit him straight after his shift though. They had dinner together, both with trays on their laps.

And that is how it went every evening after that. John came straight after work and stayed until late.

As Sherlock was recovering, their conversations shifted more and more from John talking and Sherlock listening to Sherlock talking and John listening. Sherlock had started to ardently devour books and online articles during the daytime, and commented elaborately to John on either the stupidity or the brilliance of all that he’d read. And, of course, he deduced the living shit out of anything that moved within his line of vision.

When it grew dark and Sherlock became tired, John sometimes went home, sometimes to The Andaman. Occasionally, he was even still there in the morning, slumped in his chair, hair all a mess. Then they would have breakfast together, before John reluctantly set off for the surgery.

One afternoon, John walked in to find Sherlock standing at the window, gazing out over the London rooftops.

“Wow, good to see you up and about,” John said, beaming at him.

Sherlock turned around as little as was strictly necessary in order to look at him, annoyed at John’s enthusiasm, but nevertheless pleased with his newly acquired mobility as well.  
John went to stand next to him, hands clasped behind his back.

“My window to the world,” Sherlock sighed, as they both looked into the distance. “By that I actually mean you.”  
He turned back to John and studied him for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. “John, I wanted to tell you how immensely grateful I am for your company here every day.” He smiled an uneasy smile. This kind of conversation was decidedly not his cup of tea, but during his two-year absence he’d had time to regret all the things he’d never said to the people he cared about – and had started to care about even more, recently.

John shook his head, then raised his eyebrows. “Sherlock, I am eternally grateful for _yours_. Seriously. Here’s the only place I can go in order not to _explode_ from madness. I’m honestly really glad to have you.” He smiled up openly at Sherlock, tucking in his cheeks, brows low and relaxed.

God, how often Sherlock had pictured that familiar smile while he’d been away.  
He felt he urgently wanted to say something more, but had no idea what. Something about valuing John’s friendship.  
 _What do other people say in these situations?_  
He’d never really paid attention, always deprecating such interactions as sentimental.

Then it occurred to him: _a hug_.

Hugs were actually an efficient way to convey feelings without words. And he knew John was not averse to them, at least not with him, as he had indicated before.

So Sherlock tentatively stepped closer, one hand still on the windowsill for support, and gave John a one-armed hug.  
John seemed surprised at first, taken aback perhaps. But then he heartily – but carefully, very aware of the shot wound in Sherlock’s chest – hugged him back, his arms firm but gentle against Sherlock’s back, his temple pressing against Sherlock’s ear, his regular breathing palpable under Sherlock’s arm.

It all felt wonderfully calming.

But all the same, Sherlock’s brain was never at rest. It kept processing information, ideas, observations; always seeing the bigger picture. He did not seem able to get lost in the moment. As he was embracing John, relishing his proximity and the pleasantly odd sensation of holding something living and warm, it occurred to him that this was actually a perfect opportunity to stealthily take the memory stick from John’s left trouser pocket, where he knew John had been keeping it all this time. Pickpocketing was, after all, one of his talents. And he desperately wanted to secure his access to the information about Mary, because he’d concluded he just _had_ to know what John was up against exactly if he was to be of any help to him at all. And in the end, Sherlock had become aware, he didn’t trust John to take the right decision about reading the files. Then again, it might also not _be_ the right decision at all for _him_ to read them, because as Mary had said, he might stop loving her and that would make John unhappy. So it was only logical that Sherlock should do this. He had vowed to be there for them.  
But John would of course very soon notice it was missing if he just took it, so that wouldn’t do. He could only pull this off if he had a replacement, a convincing fake copy.  
Since John had made it clear he wanted to hug more often, – which he would personally appreciate, as well; this was nice – Sherlock was quite sure there would be another opportunity soon. He decided he would order an identical memory stick online tonight to execute his plan.

Sherlock snapped back into the present, feeling satisfied with his new scheme, and enjoyed the last few seconds of the embrace before John pulled away.

* * * * *

There were flowers everywhere. And bees, buzzing bees. Sherlock was sitting in a lovely cottage garden, observing the nectar collecting of the busy insects. They were his. And this was apparently his home. It felt like he had lived here for ages. Then John appeared in the open doorway with a teapot. What was he doing here? Wasn’t John supposed to be with Mary? Sherlock didn’t see John’s wedding ring. He was struggling to remember. Had she died? Had he failed to protect her?

*


	4. Treasure hunting

Sherlock was sitting up in his bed, laptop on his knees, browsing the internet, when John came in one Wednesday afternoon. He looked up, acknowledging John’s presence with a brief smile, while his mind expeditiously ran over what needed to be done. He was wearing his specially-purchased pyjamas with trouser pockets, and an empty memory stick identical to Mary’s – initials and all – was sitting in his right pocket, ready for action.

Well, the fake copy was not entirely empty, of course. Just in case John would choose this particular 24-hour period to look at its contents, Sherlock had put a single text document on it, saying: “Sorry John, I have it – SH”.  
Otherwise John might jump to the wrong conclusion, which would be undesirable.

Sherlock felt only very slightly guilty about the whole exercise. It was, after all, for John’s own good. Still, he calculated that John might be very upset if he would find out, and Sherlock had come to hate it more and more when John was upset with him.  
So there were indeed some nerves to suppress.

“How are you feeling?”

It was John’s customary first question these days.

“I’m alright,” he answered, while typing the last sentence of an e-mail for a case he’d been solving the last ten minutes without leaving his bed.

He’d received a panicky e-mail that morning from a mother whose teenage daughter had gone missing over the weekend. Sherlock had traced her anonymous Tumblr account within eighty seconds (he had entered her Facebook profile picture in Google Images Search, _et voilá_ : she’d once posted the same one on Tumblr, the silly cow), where she’d posted an update saying that she was drinking maté only an hour ago; hence she was in Argentina or Paraguay. The person who reblogged this message – with lots of hearts – had a picture on their profile of the two of them together at Iguazú Falls, on the Brazilian border, which Sherlock used to trace back to her not-very-anonymous Facebook profile. He sent the lady’s full name and the picture in question to the worried parents, accompanied by his deduction that their daughter was pansexual, genderqueer and aspiring a career as an artist of gay porn, which was why she had wanted to escape college life and eloped with her South American Tumblr friend. And yes, there was reason to worry, as they’d only met online three weeks ago and the daughter probably did not know that her new girlfriend was actually a recently divorced (and transitioned) father of six who’d sold his kids to human traffickers in order to pay for his gender change operations. Not that Sherlock had anything against transgenders at all, but this was crossing the line.

Sherlock hit ‘send’ and looked at John.

“So how are you and Mary?”  
He’d been meaning to ask that for a while.

“Well... we don’t really talk.” John’s head did a funny twitch as he hung his coat over the back of the chair. He then sat down at the foot of the bed, his posture tense.

“You and I often don’t talk,” Sherlock replied, tucking in his chin and wrinkling his eyebrows.

“Let me tell you something,” John snapped, whisper-shouting. “For women it’s _very_ rare not to talk, and if it’s the case, it seldom means anything good.”  
He slumped his head down, raising one hand palm-forward, as if to apologise for his little outburst, or maybe because he wasn’t done talking yet.  
“Actually,” he admitted, “she doesn’t talk because I won’t let her.” John looked around him ashamedly, his eyes darting indifferently over random objects in the room. “I just can’t bear to hear things come out of her mouth and having to wonder at Every Single One Of Them if they are true or not.” He paused briefly to rub his forehead.  
“Even, on the first day when I was back, when she said we had run out of tea, I was thinking ‘Is that _really_ the case or are you just saying that so that you...’” John broke off, making a desperate gesture with his hand. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Sherlock just kept listening.

“Sherlock, I think I’m going mad,” John said, blinking hard. “I just don’t know what to do.” His voice was going squeaky again. “Don’t know how to get us out of this. She wants us to, and I want us to, as well, God I really do, but... I still haven’t decided whether I should look at the bloody memory stick or not. Whether knowing will make it easier or worse.”

John seemed to study the plant standing next to him for a bit, fighting back tears.

Sherlock felt sorry for his friend. He hated to see him like this, all wound up and perturbed.  
He prudently swung his legs to one side of the bed, slid off the edge and gently put his arms around him. After a few seconds, he could feel John let out a long sigh.  
Then his right hand crept into his right pocket, the contents of which he slipped into John’s left pocket as he simultaneously took the original out. It was all done in a flash, but they held on for much longer, savouring each other’s warmth and comfort.

* * * * *

There were bed sheets and blankets everywhere, disordered, one of them entangled around his legs. He could hear Mrs. Hudson downstairs talking to her sister on the phone again. Suddenly a foot brushed against his leg. Oh God, Janine. _Act naturally_. “Hello honey.” He turned over to look at her. Strangely, her hair was short and blond. Then, with a sigh of relief, he realised it was only John. Sherlock wrapped an arm around him and pressed his body close, then rolled over to lie on top of him. “Morning handsome.” Smiles. Sherlock leaned down to nuzzle John’s neck, resting his forehead on the pillow and grinding down his hips against him, while his mouth searched for John’s smooth skin. But he couldn’t find him anymore. There were only pillows and sheets and blankets; white, empty. John’s voice was still there, though, over clattering noises from the kitchen. “Sherlock, would you like tea?” Sherlock wanted to call back, but the next instant he was sitting astride John’s lap in the kitchen, while both were lazily sipping their mugs. He could feel the copy of the memory stick in John’s trousers and couldn’t help smiling, even though it was digging painfully into his inner thigh. The real one was in his own pocket, invisible, safe. A secret weapon with which he could slay any dragon on John’s path, he was sure.

* * * * *

Sherlock was feeling very content. He’d finally done something useful for the first time since being in this wretched hospital. All the files from the memory stick were now safely copied into a password protected folder on his laptop. He’d also managed to swap the fake memory stick back for the real one without John noticing. That had actually taken three hugs, but he hadn’t minded.  
Another mission accomplished in accordance with his vow to keep John and Mary safe from whatever might be coming.  
He still wasn’t exactly sure what Magnussen was up to, which bothered him to great extent. But it was no use racking his brains over what the evil Dane might have threatened Mary with until he had more facts.

He hadn’t actually opened any of the files yet. He felt that he would need his full attention for this, without the risk of being interrupted by nurses and ladies with coffee or library trolleys. Or worse, John.  
It could wait, anyway.

Another thing that had been accomplished over the past weeks was that he and John had now set a serious habit of hugging, which Sherlock was starting to appreciate more and more. What initially had seemed a bizarre custom to him had become something he couldn’t imagine living without. It was such an incredibly efficient way to show that you cared about someone, and it made a lot of things less complicated.  
And on top of that, it somehow recharged him. He was even convinced it sped up his healing.

When he came to think of it, he would preferably hug John non-stop whenever he had nothing else to do, ideally in some comfortable sitting – or lying – position.

As Sherlock dwelled on this – purely theoretical – mental image, John walked in, catching him smiling like a fool.  
Sherlock temporarily didn’t know where to look.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Everything alright?”

“Sure, good, yeah.”

“What were you smiling about?” John blinked a couple of times, his tongue apparently trying to escape from between his lips.

Sherlock hesitated for just two seconds. No point in lying.  
“You.”  
Then he cleared his throat and tried to think of something relevant to say.

“Oh, that’s good, then,” John replied, eyes wide, mouth in an open grin.  
For an instant, he stood there apparently expecting further explanation, trapping his lower lip under his teeth, a question mark practically hovering above his head, but then he changed the subject himself.

“Listen, there is something I want to ask you. I... I honestly don’t know what to do with this thing,” John said, digging into his left pocket to produce the very familiar memory stick. “I might just destroy it, throw it into the Thames, whatever.” He casually waved the key to his wife’s past around as he spoke. “But at the same time... I’m afraid I might regret it later if I did.” He looked at Sherlock, this time catching both lips between his teeth, as he waited for a response, or confirmation. But Sherlock just listened, frowning intently, his fingers stapled, pressing his lips together in various consecutive shapes.  
“So I was thinking,” John continued, tucking in his chin, “it might actually be a good idea for you to have a back-up of this. I mean, I might not be able to handle seeing the information that's on it, but you could. Sherlock, I want you to know what's on it. Or at least to have it, so that you can access it at any time it turns out to be necessary. Either way. I leave it to you to judge, and to deduce what needs to be deduced, if anything.”

John solemnly looked Sherlock in the eye and purposefully held up the memory stick vertically in front of him between index finger and thumb, as Sherlock tried not to blink and to keep his face straight (successfully, of course).  
“I entrust you with this.”

Sherlock just held out his hand and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my writing and would like to get an alert when I post a new story (which is about once a month), please go to [my AO3 profile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ShirleyCarlton/pseuds/ShirleyCarlton) and click 'subscribe' in the upper right corner. :)


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